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Preemies
Preemie Schedules
So my baby was born at 31 weeks, her corrected gestational age is just about 41 weeks now. I've been just rolling with her schedule as an "on demand" sleep and eat schedule. For the most part she is pretty alert for 2 hours in the evening, then when she gets hungry I feed her and put her to bed for the night. She will usually wake 4 or so hours later, but the actual times this all happens is variable (sometimes starts at 6pm or could be 9pm) But she just had her 2 month old well baby check up and my pediatrician has recommended that I start getting her on a schedule. He had some suggestions on how to do this but not sure if her brain is ready.
What have you all done with this? Did you go with an on demand schedule or start with a more regimented schedule? I guess the issue for me is do we treat her like any 2 month old, or do we treat her like her corrected gestational age. Developmentally she is not 100% up to par with 2 month olds, which I was not worried about given her prematurity. But seeing that my pedi seems to think she needs to be on a schedule now makes me feel like I've been doing this all wrong and self inflicting a lot of this sleep deprivation!
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Re: Preemie Schedules
I know some pedis think babies need to be on schedules, but to me it makes no sense. They eat sleep and poop. Especially at 41 weeks GA, she's a newborn - I can't imagine doing a schedule. With DS, we let him eat and sleep on his own patterns when he came home from the NICU...once off of their every 3 hour requirements, he started naturally eating more often during the day and going longer stretches at night and gained and grew really well. Bottles (and eventually BFing) were also much less of a struggle too so I'd say not following a strict schedule worked for us.
The only thing we really did do in terms of following a schedule was offer milk at the first signs of hunger, offer sleep at the first very early signs of sleepiness, do a little interaction right after eating, keep things darker and quieter in the house after 8 or so pm (7:30-9:30 depending on when he took his first "bedtime" feed) and do a very short "bedtime" routine after that later feed where we bathed him (if needed), changed his diaper, changed him into jammies and snuggled and read a book for his "bedtime" routine, then nursed/bottle to sleep. He fell into his own "schedule" around 3 months (6 weeks adjusted) that worked perfectly for us, but I don't think you should really push one until later.
This is our schedule too and C is 3 months adjusted. We do have a bedtime tradition-bath, massage, bottle-to help her know its the end of the day but that's about it. Her pedi hasn't even asked about a schedule. Don't stress about a schedule-eventually your LO will figure things out.
Our precious girl, born at 27 weeks.
Eh - I'd say it is up to you. We never had Andrew a schedule until 15 months...we had a routine though. I think a routine is totally different than a schedule. Routine is good - it gives them an idea of what to expect, and the moms some structure and sanity. Schedules are tough...Andrew could not be scheduled...I tried a couple of times.
I'd say follow your gut on this.
we didn't put DS on a schedule. he eventually worked his way into one. it was between 1 & 2 months that i felt like i could predict when he would be doing everything.